In the wake of Google. Inc’s decision to close PowerMeter, Microsoft Inc. will also pull the plug of its own web-based electricity monitoring service called Microsoft Hohm by next year after suffering poor uptake.
«The feedback from customers and partners has remained encouraging throughout Microsoft Hohm’s beta period,” Microsoft stated in a blog post on June 30.
“However, due to the slow overall market adoption of the service, we are instead focusing our efforts on products and solutions more capable of supporting long-standing growth within this evolving market.»
Existing users will be able to use the service until May 31, 2012. Microsoft said it does not have any plans to offer an alternative service to Hohm at this time.
Despite closing Hohm, Microsoft said it still plans to develop other clean technology products, including smart grids and clean transportation.
«Microsoft will continue to focus on developing products, solutions and partnership that span a wide spectrum of industries, such as power generation, distribution grids, buildings and [transportation] systems.»
The company said it will continue to develop the Smart Energy Reference Architecture for utility companies managing smart meters – smart grid components that are now getting more popular in urban centers.
The company might also pursue more cloud computing. Citing a study by Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy, Microsoft said a company can cut 32 percent of its emissions by using cloud applications, services moved onto the Internet rather than stored on a local computer. The company’s cloud computing platform is called Azure.
PowerMeter and Holm
News of Hohm’s discontinuation comes only a week after Google announced it would also close its own home energy monitoring service, Google PowerMeter. Also citing low adoption rates, PowerMeter will be retired even earlier, by September 16 this year.
Hohm is a free internet application launched two years ago for people wanting to know the details about their energy use and ways to improve efficiency. Using software licensed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, the application makes recommendations ranging from turning off computers to changing light bulbs, appliances, heating and insulation. The recommendations are all based on energy usage data provided by users.
Energy usage data are fed to the application automatically for Hohm users subscribed under partner utilities. Otherwise, they need to manually input data by answering nearly 200 questions to build a house profile.
This differs from PowerMeter which relied on smart meters and could only display electricity usage, although in real time. Also in contrast to PowerMeter, Microsoft intended Hohm to generate revenues by posting online advertisements.
To date, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Seattle City Light and Xcel Energy in Minnesota are the only utilities that can automatically upload data on Hohm, although Microsoft said Puget Sound Energy also signed up for the application in June 2009.
In a post about PowerMeter’s retirement, Peter Troast, the co-founder of EnergyCircle, which sells home efficiency gear, said that utilities that have been reluctant or unable to provide real-time data was ultimately the problem for Google – and most likely with Microsoft.
«It seems that [utilities are] simply not yet equipped to deal with the demands of more well-informed customers,» Mr. Troast said.
